A Federal High Court in Abuja has convicted Mahmud Usman, a commander of the proscribed Ansaru sect, and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
Usman, better known by his aliases Abu Bara’a, Abbas, or Mukhtar, entered a guilty plea on Thursday to the charge that he engaged in illegal mining activities, proceeds of which he used to procure arms for terrorism and kidnapping operations.
Emeka Nwite, the presiding judge, ordered that the defendant be held in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS) pending trial on 31 other counts filed against him.
Usman, who styled himself as the “Emir of Ansaru”, appeared in the dock alongside his deputy and chief of staff, Mahmud al-Nigeri, widely referred to as Malam Mamuda.
The two men face a 32-count indictment alleging they led a terrorist organisation, financed its activities, recruited fighters, and coordinated violent attacks across Nigeria.
In July 2022, Ansaru militants were linked to the attack on Kuje prison in Abuja, where over 600 inmates, including 64 Boko Haram suspects, escaped.
In 2022, the suspects allegedly attacked the Nigerian Army’s Wawa Cantonment in Kainji, Niger state, causing mass casualties.
Nuhu Ribadu, national security adviser (NSA), had described the two arrested commanders as masterminds of the jail break.
Abu Bara was described as the “coordinator of terrorist sleeper cells across Nigeria and the mastermind of several high-profile kidnappings and armed robberies used to fund terrorism”.
His deputy, Malam Mamuda, was said to have trained in Libya between 2013 and 2015 under foreign jihadist instructors from Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, specialising in weapons handling and improvised explosive device (IED) fabrication.
The NSA added that the suspects were also named in the 2013 abduction of French engineer Francis Collomp in Katsina state, the 2019 kidnapping of Musa Uba (Magajin Garin Daura), and the abduction of the Emir of Wawa.
Ribadu, who described their arrest as a turning point, said the suspects have networks across Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
